MLB At Bat Updated for the 2013 Season, Local Game Video Still Blacked Out

Major League Baseball has updated its MLB At Bat app for the 2013 baseball season, refining the app in several areas and adding multi-platform access for subscriptions purchased through the MLB At Bat's In-App Purchase mechanism. The app provides baseball fans with access to subscription-based live game radio and television broadcasts, MLB GameDay play-by-play service, and more.

There are several subscription levels depending on whether the user wants streaming television broadcasts, or just the radio broadcasts. The app itself, a universal app designed for both the iPhone and iPad, is a free download and offers free league-wide scoreboards and limited access to news and non-live video content from Major League Baseball.

There are two main subscription packages. The high-end $130/season MLB.tv Premium offers everything: live home-and-away television broadcasts for "out-of-market" games (that is, users can't watch their local team's television coverage) as well as live game home-and-away radio broadcasts, and the ability to watch on mobile devices, PC's, the Apple TV, and consoles. Users can also watch a growing number of archived classic games. MLB.tv Premium can be purchased through the MLB website or via in-app subscription for $25/month.

The cheaper At Bat 2013 product, which is available as an in-app purchase for $20/season or $3/month, offers both home-and-away radio broadcasts with no blackout restrictions.

New for this year, subscribers who purchase MLB.tv Premium or At Bat 2013 through IAP will get to access in-game audio or TV broadcasts not only on the iPhone and iPad, but on Android devices, as well as Macs and PCs and consoles (as applicable).

MLB Advanced Media has promised more upgrades to the app before opening day at the beginning of April, and told MacRumors that the company is aware that customers would very much like to stream local games without blackout restrictions, but that the content deals to allow that are extremely complex and difficult to negotiate.

This blackout nonsense has to end. It does nothing but hurt the consumers: the fans. I get that it's so that it's so mlb.tv doesn't compete with local cable companies, but it's still ridiculous. Let me put in my local cable company login information (like HBOgo does) and prove that I'm a subscriber to let me watch local games then. Or increase the price for unblacked out access.

Blackout restrictions won't be lifted until the current TV contracts expire.

But I believe the MLB and Yankees (at least for a part of the season) lifted the blackout restrictions in NY. But the Yankees own the local network so I'm sure that helped move things along with the trial.

Yep, I won't purchase again until MLB can work out these restrictions.

They probably can't. These rights are sold under exclusive contracts to cable providers and sports networks, and the providers aren't going to give up anything to MLB that they've already paid (big money) for. The dirty little secret of sports media is that today more than 50% of cable and satellite bills are the pass-through costs of sports team media contracts. You cannot buy them a la carte, or from any other source. This is done on purpose such that if you want to watch any local sports team you have to subscribe to cable or satellite and are forced to pay for all of the local teams.

This system is beyond broken, but it's probably impossible to fix.

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*The season starts too early and finishes too late and there are too many games in between.

Exactly! There's a lot of money wrapped up in local cable deals - especially with baseball. We're talking about a 162 game season.

The Astros and Rockets here in Houston just created their own channel (with comcast), and they are playing hardball with the other providers. So, right now 70% of Houston can't even watch the Rockets on TV.

It's hard to see these blackouts going away any time soon. In any sport.

Blackout restrictions won't be lifted until the current TV contracts expire.

But I believe the MLB and Yankees (at least for a part of the season) lifted the blackout restrictions in NY. But the Yankees own the local network so I'm sure that helped move things along with the trial.

MLB has to compensate the teams for the loss of local media franchise value if they are going to force the blackout issue. If such an agreement has been struck anywhere I have not heard about it. The Dodgers just negotiated the richest media ever, and it did not include any games being streamed locally via MLB.com to my knowledge.

So, you're the Natural? Nice to meet you.

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*The season starts too early and finishes too late and there are too many games in between.

They probably can't. These rights are sold under exclusive contracts to cable providers and sports networks, and the providers aren't going to give up anything to MLB that they've already paid (big money) for. The dirty little secret of sports media is that today more than 50% of cable and satellite bills are the pass-through costs of sports team media contracts. You cannot buy them a la carte, or from any other source. This is done on purpose such that if you want to watch any local sports team you have to subscribe to cable or satellite and are forced to pay for all of the local teams.

This system is beyond broken, but it's probably impossible to fix.

They could link it to DirecTV or other accounts as some other services do, like HBO.

This is one of my most used apps over the years and I (mostly) love it.

The blackout thing needs to be re-evaluated. For instance, I live in New Orleans, I'm from the Dallas area, so my favorite team is the Texas Rangers. But guess what? They're blacked out all the way down here because Fox Sports Southwest is carried on local cable. And most of the time they don't carry Rangers games, they carry Asstros games (FS Houston on Cox), who are also blacked out on MLB.TV, so I can't actually watch the Rangers "locally", I would have to get the DirectTV MLB package, and they may be blacked out there also. I could understand blackouts if they were more local. Like within 100 miles or so of the city/ballpark, but not 500+ miles away, it is ridiculous.

This blackout nonsense has to end. It does nothing but hurt the consumers: the fans. I get that it's so that it's so mlb.tv doesn't compete with local cable companies, but it's still ridiculous. Let me put in my local cable company login information (like HBOgo does) and prove that I'm a subscriber to let me watch local games then. Or increase the price for unblacked out access.

Again, this restriction only hurts the real fans.

I will say though, listening to the audio while watching the Gameday isn't bad. I'm in Utah so I can't watch the Giants when they play Colorado or Arizona. They don't even show AZ games on local tv. But MLB At Bat is pretty good about putting highlight videos up quick. Sometimes by the next inning. If that doesn't work for you, get SlingBox!

When I first saw this article I was wondering why a game would be front page. Its not Apple hardware, OS, or Software. So why front page? However seeing all the responses I guess there are a lot of Apple fans that care about baseball. Who knew? Not me...

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I have a collection of Apple stickers from all my Apple product purchases - they are white (the stickers not the products)